[Aztlan] Researching Totora Fabrication

[Mario Cabrejos]

Hola listeros

I apologise to send this mail to the list, but Mrs Bruce server 
(earthlink) rejects my direct mails.

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> What I am really curious about is whether they (the coastal reed boats)
> are fabricated in the same way as the ones on Lago Titicaca....certainly
> all the images I have seen of the boats with "puma" heads have been from
> the lake region not the coast. I wonder why... and I also wonder if they 
> are for festival purposes only or for touristic purposes with any particular 
> basis grounded in traditional boat building practice?

I wrote to a friend in Puno city, Ana Maria Pino, who rules a cultural center there
called La Casa del Corregidor  http://casadelcorregidor.pe/welcome.php with an
important library on Puno historical/cultural themes. (Address: Deustua 576, next
to the Puno Cathedral and Dreyer Museum)

She states that the "puma" heads in the Lake reed boats came from Bolivia and
have touristic purposes. She mentioned that information on the traditional use of
totora in Puno could be found in Bernedo Málaga, Leónidas La cultura puquina:
historia Arequipa, Populibros, 1958 183 p. She also point to me a gravure found
in the book Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas 
by E. George Squier (1877) Chapter XIV, of a reed boats bridge over a Titicaca lake
effluent (Desaguadero river).

About "ornated" reed boats, I do not remember any reed boat reproduction showing
ornaments on the prehispanic cultures around the Titicaca lake . On the contrary, there
is hundreds of Moche and Chimu artifacts (two cultures that flourish successively in the
same arean in the north coast of actual Peru) representing very elaborated and ornated 
reed boats.

Regards,

Mario